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Smash Bros Ultimate character unlocks: how to cheat to unlock every playable fighter fast

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate features the most eclectic, huge cast ever assembled in a fighting game – but you’ll only start with 8 of the 76 total cast members playable. 60-some character unlocks takes a long time, obviously… but there’s some tricks to make it much faster. Here’s how to unlock characters – and quickly – so you can have a full roster as soon as possible.

While every single fighter from Smash Bros history is present in Super Smash. Bros Ultimate on the Nintendo Switch, you’ll start out with just the original 8 fighters from the classic N64 game that started it all: that’s Mario, Donkey Kong, Link, Samus, Yoshi, Kirby, Fox McCloud and Pikachu. That’s right – you don’t even get the 4 secret hidden characters from that first game initially.

Everyone is here, but aside from those 8 you’ll need to unlock every character – and over in the story mode, World of Light, you’ll start out with just Kirby, the only character to survive the cataclysmic event in Ultimate’s story opening. On this page, we explain the fastest way to unlock fighters fast naturally… plus a way to cheat the character unlock system to get them even faster still.

How to unlock characters in Super Smash Bros Ultimate

Based on our early time with Smash Ultimate – a good forty hours pre-release – as far as we can tell, character unlocks outside of World of Light are relatively random. With that said, if you want to unlock characters as quickly as possible there are ways we’ve discovered to game the system a little – and in doing so you’ll be able to guarantee yourself a full roster a little more quickly.

Anyway, there are essentially three ways to unlock characters in Smash Ultimate:

Character unlocks in World of Light, the single-player story mode. As previously mentioned, the story mode starts you out with just Kirby, and you’ll have to slowly expand your roster from there by conquering the map. Once a character is unlocked in World of Light they’re also unlocked over in the main modes. Given that World of Light unlocks are in set positions across the map, this is the only way you can guarantee a specific unlock if that’s what you’re after.

Completing Classic Mode. Every run of classic mode will give you a random encounter with a new challenger, and if you beat them you’ll unlock them in the rest of the game.

Random character unlocks from playing the game in general. The way Smash Ultimate seems to work is that every now and then it’ll reward you for playing the game and competing in various modes with a random ‘new challenger’ fight where, if you beat the character, you unlock them. This works in all modes, even Multiplayer.

With these two methods in mind, let’s talk about how you can game the system to unlock characters very, very quickly indeed…

Combining World of Light and Challenger Approach to unlock fighters quickly and naturally

Consider what was said above – characters unlock both through World of Light and through merely playing the game. If you want to unlock all the fighters in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate quickly, you can combine these two methods. It’s simple, but it works. Here’s what to do:

Play World of Light. World of Light is full of character unlocks anyway, so abuse that fact. There will be seven wasted character unlocks here, since the remainder of the original 8 also need to be unlocked – but you’ll still encounter plenty of characters frequently.

However, every 10 minutes, after a few battles, quit World of Light. Because you’ve been playing, once you get all the way back to the main menu of Smash Ultimate, the game will offer you up a ‘new challenger’ encounter against a character you’re yet to unlock in World of Light.

It doesn’t hugely matter if you win or lose that battle, but once the new challenger approach battle is over, head back into World of Light for another 10-15 minutes, then repeat.

This is a simple way of maximizing your character unlocks in both modes – you’ll unlock some fighters through World of Light, then others through the main menu. You’ll see some duplication in World of Light, but not the other way – thankfully, once a character is unlocked in World of Light it can’t show up as a new challenger and will be available for full use in all modes.

If you fail to stick the landing with an encounter, don’t panic. In World of Light you can retry, and even outside of it there’s a method to give you a second chance – Challenger’s Approach. If you lose an encounter, you’ll have a chance to retry the character unlock battle via a special menu option.

You’ll find the option to retry in the bottom-right of the Games and More screen, as pictured above. It’s on a timer, so fighters who beat you won’t reappear for a while – but when they do you can tackle them again for a chance to unlock them as a playable character.

Cheating character unlocks by rebooting Smash Ultimate and beating the timer

There is a way to cheat the above method, however, and that’s this: those random unlocks on Smash Ultimate run on a ten-minute timer, and that timer doesn’t reset straight away after a new challenger character unlock encounter. What does this mean in real terms? It means you can reset the game and force another encounter. Here’s the step by step of how we did it:

First, trigger a fighter encounter for the character unlock battle as described above. Win the fight.

When you hit the ‘Character joins the battle’ splash screen, press HOME on your Nintendo Switch, then close the Smash Bros. Ultimate software.

Reboot Smash Ultimate. Head into Smash mode, and set up rules for a one-stock Smash match. Pick a character you’re comfortable with, and for expediency don’t play the match – just throw yourself off the stage.

The Character Unlock Encounter timer hasn’t reset, so when this match is ended by your self-destruction, you’ll trigger another unlock battle. Go ahead and do it.

When you win and the splash screen appears announcing that character is unlocked, press HOME and close the game again. Reboot and repeat as much as you like.

This way, an unlock process that should take between eight and twelve hours can be streamlined down to a little over two.

Super Smash Bros Ultimate Character Roster:

Here’s the character roster – who you’re looking to collect and add to your roster to ensure it’s complete: